Hegel’s Realm of Shadows

Logic as Metaphysics in “The Science of Logic”

E-book $10.00 to $45.00About E-booksISBN: 9780226588841
Published
November 2018

Hegel frequently claimed that the heart of his entire system was a book widely regarded as among the most difficult in the history of philosophy, The Science of Logic. This is the book that presents his metaphysics, an enterprise that he insists can only be properly understood as a “logic,” or a “science of pure thinking.” Since he also wrote that the proper object of any such logic is pure thinking itself, it has always been unclear in just what sense such a science could be a “metaphysics.”

Robert B. Pippin offers here a bold, original interpretation of Hegel’s claim that only now, after Kant’s critical breakthrough in philosophy, can we understand how logic can be a metaphysics. Pippin addresses Hegel’s deep, constant reliance on Aristotle’s conception of metaphysics, the difference between Hegel’s project and modern rationalist metaphysics, and the links between the “logic as metaphysics” claim and modern developments in the philosophy of logic. Pippin goes on to explore many other facets of Hegel’s thought, including the significance for a philosophical logic of the self-conscious character of thought, the dynamism of reason in Kant and Hegel, life as a logical category, and what Hegel might mean by the unity of the idea of the true and the idea of the good in the “Absolute Idea.” The culmination of Pippin’s work on Hegel and German idealism, no Hegel scholar or historian of philosophy will want to miss this book.

Chapter One. The Significance of The Science of Logic Chapter Two. Logic and Metaphysics Chapter Three. The Role of Self-Consciousness in The Science of Logic Chapter Four. Logic and Negation

Part II

Chapter Five. The Logic of Being: The “Given” as a Logical Problem Chapter Six. Essence as Reflected Being Chapter Seven. The Lives of Concepts Chapter Eight. Life as a Logical Concept Chapter Nine. The True and the Good

Reference List Index

Review Quotes

Terry Pinkard, Georgetown University

“This wonderfully clear and exciting book of philosophy is the best book ever written on Hegel’s Logic in any language I know.”

Rolf-Peter Horstmann, Humboldt University of Berlin

“To his numerous and enormously influential studies of important aspects of Hegel’s philosophy, Pippin adds another work that is bound to shape our understanding of what for Hegel forms the heart of his philosophy, namely, the Logic. It brilliantly illustrates Pippin’s extraordinary Hegel scholarship. It is also remarkably readable and so will be of interest not only to philosophers and philosophy students, but to a wider audience as well.”

Robert Stern, The University of Sheffield

“In this fascinating reading of Hegel’s TheScience of Logic, Robert Pippin gives us much to ponder—not least how it might be possible to see Hegel’s position as a fusion of Kantian idealism and Aristotelian metaphysics. Pippin’s defense of this view displays all the dialectical skills of the master himself, and will bring fresh life to the debates concerning how this text is to be read.”

Michael Quante, University of Münster

“Hegel’s Realm of Shadows makes an impressive original contribution by showing that Hegel’s philosophy is a systematically lively alternative to the approaches of Kant, Fichte, Frege or Wittgenstein. By addressing how The Science of Logic establishes the autonomy of thought and showing that freedom shapes everything in Hegel’s philosophy, Pippin impressively demonstrates the actuality and vitality of Hegel’s philosophy.”

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